the last word cannot be said for a long time yet; but M. Jouguet's book
must be the standard authority for the next generation, and the basis on
which future scholars will have to work. The ground covered is botli
extensive and interesting, for it is the foundation and framework of life
in Egypt in the Boman period. A short notice cannot do justice to the
interest of the volume, but it may serve to indicate its importance to
those whom it concerns.

Another work, of almost equal length, though of somewhat more
restricted interest, is Prof. Bostowzew's elaborate study of the agricultural
system,24 not only in Ptolemaic and Boman Egypt, but also in Sicily, Asia
Minor, and Boman Africa. The special subject of the book is the various
forms of ownership and occupation of land—a subject which has alike
legal, economic, and social sides to it, and which, as students of the papyri
know, is constantly presenting itself in the interpretation of the texts
contained in them. Here again we have a work which, from its learning,
its thoroughness, and its ample documentation, will be a firm foundation
for the studies of scholars in the future.

A careful and intelligent study of the officers known as epistrategi has
been produced by M. Victor Martin,25 of the University of Geneva, who
has studied the papyri under Nicole and Wilcken, His principal con-
clusions are that under the Ptolemies there was only one epistrategus,
namely the viceroy- of the Thebaid; that originally the Thebaid was
administered by a strategus, but that from the time of Ptolemy Epiphanes
this officer was generally- (but apparently not always) raised to the rank of
epistrategus, and bore the combined title of " epistrategus and strategus of
the Thebaid "; that he was a military and civil governor of the highest
grade, administering the province for the king; that Augustus increased
the number of epistrategi, adding one for the Delta and one for Middle
Egypt (the Fayum and the Seven Nomes), but reduced their importance
by taking away their military competence; that thenceforth the
epistrategus was a civil official of considerable dignity, but not very great
practical importance, his chief functions being the allotment of liturgies
and other details of administration, without any judicial authority except
(as not infrequently happened) by delegation from the prefect; and that
the office was finally abolished by Diocletian. A list of the known
holders of the office is appended.

Wilcken has published26 (in a collection of papers in honour of the
centenary of Richard Lepsius) an ostracon from Thebes, containing an oath
to be taken by one of the parties in a settlement of a controversy^.
Several similar texts have been published in demotic by Bevillout (whose